The Allentown Beer Festival doubled in size and scope in its second year — double the vendors, double the ticket sales and more than double the space. But what remained constant was the variety.

“Everyone’s so different and everyone’s so passionate about different things, and I think that’s so cool,” said Jessica Goedtel of Hellertown, who volunteered as a pourer for Lost Tavern and frequently travels to beer festivals.

More than 50 brewers from the Lehigh Valley and down the East Coast sold ales with names such as Craft D’Bear and Cloud 7 to hundreds along a two-block stretch of Hamilton Street on Saturday. And by the end of the afternoon, the kegs were running out.

“We’re doing what beer festivals should do: We should run out of beer, the beer reps should be happy coming to the event,” said Faraz Afshar, head of the Bayou Boys Beer Program and manager of Cork and Cage bottle shop in Allentown. He worked with the Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce in coordinating the beer festival and recruiting vendors.

Among the vendors were home brewers with humble origins, including Jeff Bonner of Cave Brewing — now a tap room in Bethlehem but once a garage operation in Arizona 29 years ago.

Bonner, a nuclear engineer by day, started with a home brew kit that his wife bought him at a book club those years ago.

“It was absolutely horrible beer, but I loved it,” he said. “Skunky hops, basically bread yeast, the malt was horrible, but I loved the process.”

It wasn’t the brewing that brought him to the Lehigh Valley — it was his day job. But then he decided to open a brewery in Salisbury Township.

Competition wasn’t something he worried about. Most local vendors at the festival agree that more craft breweries popping up in the Lehigh Valley simply means more stops for craft beer enthusiasts from the area and out of town.

“That’s the whole idea — bring people outside of the area into it,” said Kit Brown, a regular patron at Lost Tavern in Hellertown.

“If you have a very strong area that has strong breweries, you’re going to have a lot of people coming to that area, where the breweries support one another,” his wife, Erin, added.

Lost Tavern, for example, is part of the Lehigh Valley Brewers’ Guild — an organization of 11 local craft breweries that hold meetings and collaborative events, including a festival next Saturday at the Lost Tavern.

The beer festival on Hamilton Street serves a similar purpose of bringing people together, said Liz Regan, marketing and events manager for the Hamilton District Main Street Program and the Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce. Proceeds from the festival go to the Hamilton Main Street program, which runs events and beautification projects downtown.

“We really wanted to do something that would get people down here and see what’s happening,” she said.